March for Our Lives

In 2018, you saw that across the board.

You specifically saw it across things like March For Our Lives and movements that brought in, uh, elected officials into something that was built by young people.

You saw it again in 2020 where the Biden administration and Biden campaign really made an effort to reach out to Gen Z and then represented Gen Z and worked with youth organizers and youth advocates while in the White House to get things like the, uh, Inflation Reduction Act passed.

Uh, we passed the first gun violence prevention bill in over 30 years.

Leaders We Deserve is announcing a $1.2 million investment in 11 states after already investing half a million dollars in those campaigns.

Leaders We Deserve was founded by David Hogg, a co-founder of the March For Our Lives movement, and is now especially focused on state legislatures working to flip control of, for example, the Wisconsin State Senate from Republican to Democrat, and to break the Republican supermajorities in the state legislatures in Florida, Iowa, and Missouri.

Leaders We Deserve is also backing Democratic candidates for the state legislatures in North Carolina and Texas, two states with big Republican majorities in their state legislatures, but where the Democratic candidates for United States Senate are currently running ahead in the polls.

And joining us now is David Hogg, president of Leaders We Deserve PAC.

He is a co-founder of March For Our Lives.

Uh, David, why have you decided to focus on state legislatures?

Because for so long, you know, throughout college when I was studying a lot of the history of the conservative movement, I saw how much of a discrepancy there was between how much Democrats were focused on state legislatures and how much Republicans were focused on it.

Hmm

... my high school and I, we went to the March For Our Lives in Washington, DC, and-

Can you remind people what you mean when you say Parkland?

Yeah.

Like, we, we practiced the drills in school, like what would happen if a shooter were to come into the building or at one of our events.

And so it's, it's kind of crazy that that's the reality that me and so many other people in this country have had to face.

And I remember when we went to the March For Our Lives in DC, that was pretty much all of our first, like, protest ever.

Hmm.

I'm the only state rep candidate who's endorsed in Ohio from that org.

And him and I have been organizing together parallelly through March For Our Lives and other things for a really long time.

And you'd go to Capitol Hill, and you'd have these conversations of like, you know, "This needs to happen.

That needs to happen." And people would look at you, people would chat with you, people would smile, and then nothing would get done.

Yeah, all the way back.

I've been to every Sexy Liberal, all the way back to, was it, um, what, March For Our Lives, or was that-

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Now, to me, what I was moved with, I was, I was moved during COVID, which was a complicated, strange time, but I was moved by the BLM protests.

I've been moved by the, uh, March For Our Lives protest and how a bunch of high schoolers got together, and a million of them showed up on Ca- on, on Washington, DC, and beyond that, not just showed up, but were articulate about those issues.

Like, man, it's a tactic to make you not care, and so you have to, you have to get out, you have to touch grass, and you have to show up.

From a political standpoint, the only places I have truly seen change is where people do actually show up, and showing up on your phone doesn't count.